Parallax
by PositronicCrow
Summary: To the dismay of a human and a robot, neither rejoining society nor testing were things that were likely to happen any time soon.
1. Runaway

A piercing shaft of white sunlight overwhelmed Chell's vision as she approached the exit - a light of intensity that the mimicries of natural light at Aperture could never come close to. Taking trembling, uncertain steps towards an idea that for the last few years seemed almost impossible, she emerged outdoors. Her eyes took longer than what seemed normal to adjust - probably from years of little exposure to real sunlight. When they cleared up, she stared at the scenery in awe.

Before her was a wheat field. The gold-colored plants stretched to the horizon, and the sky was clear blue aside from towering clouds in the distance. The air felt different here. It was warm and moving, contrasting with the sterile, cool air that had been kept at a consistent temperature. A light wind brushed at strands of her hair.

This peaceful moment only lasted a few seconds before being interrupted, as a loud noise erupted from the doorway.

Half expecting that her release had been an exceptionally cruel trick, Chell abruptly turned to see her Companion Cube collide with the ground. It was slightly charred, but still in good condition. She smiled - for all of the disdain GLaDOS expressed for Chell being quick to euthanize it, the flames had been nearly harmless to the cube.

She continued to walk to the wheat, and scooped up a clump of dry soil. She pressed the dirt in her palm with her fingers. When was the last time she had touched something so raw and organic? She couldn't even put a number to the years.

Heading back to retrieve her cube, she was suddenly struck by the concept that actually picking up the thing looked rather difficult. Using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device had become instinctual, and having to use her hands to grasp the cube looked unnatural. Not having the ASHPD firmly secured to her arm was almost like missing a limb. Nevertheless, Chell was determined to give her best shot at carrying the cube.

Hoisting it up, she began her journey. It took about thirty seconds for her to figure out that this wasn't going to work. The cube was just too big, and it wasn't called a "Weighted Companion Cube" without a reason.

She tried tumbling it through the wheat, which proved to be another remarkably inefficient method of travel. Chell sadly admitted defeat and placed it on the ground. She would come back for her beloved cube, she told herself. Once she found a nearby civilization, she could bring a rope with her, or possibly even store it in a vehicle. That sparked another train of thought - were there even any other humans nearby?

The automated voice seemed to imply that some sort of apocalyptic event had occurred while she was in stasis. _Maybe it was just making its approximation based on the state of the facility_, she reasoned. After all, no one had anticipated that GLaDOS would flood the facility with neurotoxin and take control of Aperture Science Laboratories. The fact that absolutely no one had been maintaining the facility was probably the indicator the systems were using. That they had even created automated messages in the case of an apocalypse was bizarre to begin with, when Chell thought about it. It was probably just another oddity of Aperture; from what she had picked up, Cave Johnson seemed to have been responsible for stranger protocols. It wouldn't surprise her if the man's rather extreme enthusiasm compelled him to create preparations ensuring that in a scenario where most humans were dead, his cherished science could still continue.

After reasoning out her initial surge of panic that civilization as she knew it may have collapsed in the number of years she was in stasis, Chell reassured herself that it wasn't very likely. Humanity was probably the same as ever. She studied the horizon, looking for any indication of buildings but seeing nothing but endless wheat. _It doesn't matter how many miles I have to walk_, she thought. _Whether civilization's still standing or not, I'm going to find other people_. And with the same sense of determination that compelled her through countless tests, she took a deep breath and continued to walk forward.

Even the doubt lingering in the back of her mind couldn't hinder the sense of elation that she was free. The sun warmed her skin, which had been made pale with light deprivation from years spent underground. The air practically hummed with life. When an insect landed on her leg, she gently brushed it onto her hand and marveled at its delicate structure and the iridescence of its exoskeleton.

About two hours later, the wheat faded to grass, and she began to encounter shrubs and a few trees scattered throughout the landscape. When Chell spotted a stream, she immediately went running towards it. The intensity of her thirst hadn't even registered until she heard a discernible sound of trickling water. She promptly started drinking huge handfuls of water, deadly bacteria be damned. Chell estimated that the last time she drank water instead of receiving liquids via a tube must have been at least twenty years ago, and this was well worth the risk. Despite the high temperature, the stream was bitingly and invigoratingly cold.

Chell realized that she was fortunate to find the stream relatively quickly in her journey; if it had taken even a day or two longer, she easily could have wound up facing the effects of dehydration. While hugely relieved that GLaDOS had actually set her free, couldn't she have at least seen fit to toss her a water bottle before she departed? Not to mention some sunscreen. Judging by the sunlight's ceaseless glare, she estimated that she was going to have one hell of a painful sunburn if this continued much longer. Chell decided that for her own safety, she should probably follow the stream so that she could at least have a reliable water source nearby.

Keeping a brisk pace along the flowing water, she heard the sound of birds chirping. Swiveling her head towards it, she caught sight of a few sparrows flitting past, their wings catching the sunlight. At this point, it was proving difficult to believe that humanity had really been eradicated. Everything appeared not just how she remembered it, but even better than what she could recall from memory. Maybe it was simply the exhilaration of being released after years of being trapped in a mostly sterile facility, but the world seemed extraordinarily brilliant and alive.

Though her conviction that there were other humans remained, the feeling of optimism was somewhat dampened when the massive clouds on the horizon revealed themselves to be rainclouds as they approached. The sky deepened to slate grey, and a soft, warm wind hissed in the grass. Large droplets speckled Chell's clothing and skin and soon escalated into a downpour, soaking her within minutes and reverberating against the dirt. She couldn't resist bringing some of it to her lips to taste the rainwater.

A low resonance of thunder echoed above, and the abrupt scent of ozone sent her rushing towards a growth of trees. She had learned to associate the smell with the electrical discharge of damaged machinery, which could be potentially lethal. Outside Aperture, she probably just looked paranoid. It was definitely a habit she would have to break out of.

The thunderstorm lasted for a few hours, and in that time, Chell still hadn't seen the slightest hint of human life. She chalked it up to Aperture's weird compulsion to set up their laboratories in a secretive place in the middle of nowhere. Well, they had done a fine job. The last time she had seen any kind of building had been when she emerged from the deteriorating, unassuming shack that served as a concealed entrance to the facility, and judging by the forest she was walking through, it was going to be a while before she found any others.

As night approached, Chell begin to feel disoriented, and her head was already clouded with fatigue. After so many hours of testing with the assistance of adrenal vapor to keep her constantly alert, she was now starting to feel the effects of something close to jet lag.

While Chell was intent on getting as far away from Aperture as possible before it became an absolute necessity to sleep, she had to admit that the darkness was making it hard to see, and accidentally running into trees was the last thing she wanted at the moment. She begrudgingly glanced around for a place on the ground, settling down on a patch against a pine tree that was relatively untouched by the rain and scraping away small rocks and pinecones. Though feeling uneasy about sleeping in the middle of a forest, she fell asleep within several minutes of resting her head on the ground.

Chell awoke to the sound of a squirrel scornfully chattering not far above her. The pine tree that she picked to rest under must have been where its drey was located. Opening her eyes, she saw that the forest was already dappled with morning sunlight. Well, the squirrel hadn't been the worst wake-up call ever. It was vastly preferable to waking up in a Relaxation Chamber again. Stretching her limbs, she became aware of a dull ache in her muscles - probably in equal parts from the hours of testing and from sleeping on the rough terrain.

As hunger started to claw at her stomach, Chell started to seriously consider how she was going to obtain food. She had absolutely no weaponry, and even if she was somehow successful at hunting, she wasn't certain she could actually kill a bird or small mammal if it came to it. As fortune had it, she eventually came across a hackberry tree. Small purple fruit dotted its branches. She vaguely recalled someone mentioning to her that the berries were edible - maybe one of her parents? - but couldn't remember anyone actually eating them. Giving a shrug, Chell popped one into her mouth anyway.

While she couldn't say that the berry tasted bad - vaguely raisiny with a hint of sweetness - it wasn't terribly appetizing, either. If not for the fact that it was the only food source she had seen for miles, she wouldn't have touched another one. As that wasn't the case, Chell continued wolfing them down until the hunger subsided and her fingertips were stained reddish-purple.

* * *

It was late afternoon when she stumbled upon it. She had been walking through a clearing in the forest when the ground abruptly seemed to change – instead of her long-fall boots sinking slightly into the earth, there was a distinct firmness underneath her feet. Peering downwards, it didn't look any different from the ground she had been stepping on just a moment ago. But when she brushed away the covering of dead leaves and thin layer of dirt, Chell found what looked like-

Concrete?

Taking some paces forward, the concrete ended, but the hard ground continued when she walked horizontally. Just as she had suspected - a road, buried under over roughly two to four decades worth of leaf debris.

Her heart sank. This was definitely evidence that an apocalyptic event had indeed occurred. On the other hand, maybe there was another explanation - the road might have been deemed too old and not worth maintaining, or perhaps it had been abandoned when a faster, more direct road was implemented elsewhere. Maybe it had even been solely a road to Aperture Science Laboratories, and for obvious reasons had not been in use for a very long time. Whatever the case, Chell followed the road with a feeling of anticipation in her chest.

A few hours later, and something other than the constant variations of green and brown caught her eye. Turning her head to the side of the road and peering between the thick tangle of branches, it looked like white paint. Chell's breath quickened - without taking a second glance, she went running towards it, almost losing her footing on a knotted root in her apprehension.

It was a house, and accelerating towards it, she noticed that the white paint was peeling - but no, it was still technically standing. Maybe the person who lived in it just didn't care to maintain it. Leaping onto the porch, Chell pounded at the door until her knuckles stung, desperately hoping that someone would open it. She tried the door handle, but it was firmly locked. With a sense of panic flooding her system, she sprinted down the road.

There was another house about a quarter mile from the first one. It had the same look of deterioration about it as the first. This one's door, however, was left slightly agape. Hesitatingly tiptoeing towards the entrance, Chell's pulse raced. In a few seconds, she would most likely know whether society still existed. The door was slowly cajoled open with a loud creak.

Inside, chunks of ceiling were missing from the frame, lighting up the hall with weak streams of clouded light. Furniture lie toppled on the floor. One of the bone-white walls was streaked with rust from rainwater. Vines and shrubs grew in the cracks of the structure, extending upwards to catch the light that trickled down.

Chell leaned on a wall.

_No. This wasn't supposed to happen. This isn't fair._

Far from the blissful sensation of freedom she had experienced when she stood in the sunlit wheat field, Chell felt trapped again. Every second of testing had been completed with the unyielding belief that if she could just escape, what she would find outside would make it all worth it. And during that entire time, the only thing she was fighting for was a ruined, empty world.

Resisting the temptation to break down in tears, Chell forced herself to move forward and investigate the house. She could still try to figure out what happened to the human population - it was quite possible that there were still many people left. For all she knew, the apocalypse event could have been localized, and most of civilization was still intact. _Like Chernobyl_, she thought. Some sort of nuclear incident could have occurred - maybe even because of GLaDOS's massacre of all the Aperture scientists - and forced everyone to vacate the area immediately.

Despondently wandering around the relatively stable-looking parts of the house, there was not a lot of information to be gained. No newspapers with bold headlines like "_Aliens Invade Michigan_!" No notes explaining where the owners had gone. Not even a human body. It was as if they had simply disappeared. Nearly everything had been abandoned - Chell estimated that whoever lived here had been in a hurry to get out. All of the furniture was more or less in its original place, and the rooms were still furnished with threadbare tablecloths, paintings, and a still-intact television.

After stepping up a staircase with utmost caution, she entered what appeared to be a bedroom. The blankets were rumpled and covered in dust, reminding her unpleasantly of how her own bed had looked when she woke up from stasis.

There was still no indication of what had happened, but when she peered into the dusty contents of a drawer, she did find something that had been oddly absent from the rest of the house: family photographs. _They must have taken all the ones that were in sight when they left_, Chell realized. Gingerly brushing off thin layers of grime from the photos, she studied them with a twinge of sorrow. A woman laughing. A group of relatives posing together in someone's backyard. A young girl beaming as she cradled a pet chicken in her arms.

What happened to these people?

Whatever had cut their lives short in such a way made Chell feel mournful and a little angry - if things had just gone right, she might have been greeted by them when she ran up to their house. They might have helped her, and given her a warm place to stay until she got the whole rejoining society thing figured out. Instead she was ransacking what was left of their belongings and wondering if they were dead.

Placing the photos back in the drawer and gently closing it, she moved on and tried to find anything that might actually be of use to her. She could only contemplate the relics of people who were long gone for so much time when she had her own survival to attend to.

Just as she had expected, most of the clothes had gone absent from the closets. However, she did find a box full of folded women's clothing. Most of what was preserved inside consisted of sundresses and blouses, which were obviously not the best choices at the moment. Chell did, however, find a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans that were frayed at the ends. It was a relief to be able to discard the well-worn orange jumpsuit in exchange for clothing that wasn't singed by lasers, bloodstained, and containing traces of gels that were allegedly not fond of the human skeleton. The jeans and shirt were slightly stiff, but fit her well enough.

Upon further inspection, she also found a pair of sneakers, which she switched with the long fall boots. Though she was extremely competent with the unusual boots, Chell admitted that the strange angle at which her feet were held in them was probably unhealthy in the long term. Still, the long fall boots had proven too useful to not bring with her. Not to mention that they were an expensive piece of Aperture equipment - she imagined that GLaDOS would have some harsh words to say at the idea of just leaving them behind in some random, disintegrating house.

Now to find the other thing she badly needed - food. She wandered into the garage and promptly began rummaging around in search of it, hoping that they had actually left some behind. To her relief, there were a few cans hidden behind some cooking supplies on the bottom shelf of a pantry. The first one was labelled "_condensed milk_". That was out of the question - she couldn't imagine that its expiration date had been very long. The next one was labelled "_pineapple_". It was well worth a shot. Chell stabbed the top of the can with a knife she found in the kitchen. As soon as she pierced the metal, an overpowering, sickly-sweet smell filled the air. She gagged and moved the can to the other side of the garage.

Well, there went her faith in canned food longevity.

She tried opening canned corn, canned tomato paste, and canned water chestnuts, all emitting their own unique smell of decay. None of them came even close to smelling edible, and they all shortly joined the can of pineapple in its corner. She did, however, find something that she hadn't been immediately looking for - a bag of white rice. The bag was still sealed, and the rice still looked like rice. It wasn't quite as good as pineapple, but it was food.

Chell managed to collect bottled water, a cooking pot, some dry pieces of wood, and a box of matches. Boiling the rice over a small fire, she waited until droplets of hot water hissed at the sides of the pot and rivulets of steam fogged the air. Taking a bite of rice with a spoon, it was obvious that her method of cooking was less than ideal. The rice was watery and had an almost glue-like consistency. It hardly felt fair considering how much time she put into making it. Still, she wasn't one to reject perfectly edible food.

As she ate the rice, her mind drifted back to the situation she had found herself in. What would have happened if she _had_ returned to find society the same as ever?

Chell didn't have a very good memory of her life before Aperture. She was certain that if she somehow stumbled upon her hometown or old house, she would recognize it - but when she honestly made an attempt to remember it, nothing came but a blur of cobbled-together memories and bits of information. No names, no faces. Not even her own surname. She once caught a glimpse of a file with her name on it, but much to her frustration, the last name was labelled as [REDACTED]. It was as if GLaDOS had very purposefully censored all the traces of Chell's previous life.

She imagined a circumstance in which she would have found people living in this house. They probably would have let her stay with them for a little while, but in all likelihood would have contacted the police or something for help. What were the other options when a mute, exhausted, and slightly malnourished woman comes knocking on your door from the middle of the woods with no explanation? And_ then_ - Chell furrowed her brow. What would even happen after that? Aside from her name, she had no identity. Would they really make it that easy to reintegrate into society?

Theoretically, she could have told them the truth - that she had been kept in cryostasis for the last few decades in Aperture. The clothing she had been wearing certainly would have been sufficient evidence. Given her name, they could have figured out that she was one of the people who had gone missing from the questionable testing that went on. Maybe they could have even found a few surviving relatives of hers.

But that would most certainly warrant investigation of Aperture Science Laboratories. Something about that thought alone made Chell's stomach twist in an uncomfortable way. While it was true that she didn't want the government to stumble upon Aperture technology - particularly the more questionable experiments - there was something else to it.

In a weird way, she felt almost… protective.

It didn't make any sense. After all the things Chell had been put through in that place, she should want nothing more than to burn it down. She should feel furious even thinking about Aperture - she knew that's how she felt when she first started testing.

Though she was certainly relieved to have escaped, she couldn't bring herself to feel overwhelmingly resentful. Thinking back, Chell had become a much stronger person during the time she spent at Aperture. She had reached expertise in handling situations where her life was at stake, learned how to think for herself, how to take fate into her hands and _win_. There was a strange sort of nostalgia about the place.

There was another odd component to the feeling, too; Chell did not like the idea of anyone getting a hold of GLaDOS.

She didn't quite know what to make of that. On one hand, GLaDOS not only put her through hell for a significant portion of her life, but also attempted to murder her numerous times. On the other, Chell had witnessed something different about GLaDOS when they united in the ruins of Old Aperture. She didn't entirely understand what GLaDOS's connection was with Caroline - was she based on Caroline? Or was she her uploaded consciousness, warped when it was placed in a robotic frame? Either way, some part of her was essentially human. And while Chell certainly didn't forgive her, she did feel sorry for her.

_I can't linger on what happened there forever_, Chell reflected. _I'm allowed to move on with my life_. And at the moment, that meant going to sleep. Curling up next to the fireplace, she gradually drifted off.

* * *

**This is the first fanfic I've ever written. Hopefully it's comprehensible.**


	2. Mimicry

The robots were inadequate test subjects, GLaDOS verified for the 154th time since her former test subject left the premises. They had been carefully simulated to behave as humans typically did. And not just any humans - using the data that had been collected from recorded observations of hundreds of humans, they mimicked the traits of the better-performing test subjects. Perhaps a little too well, GLaDOS noted with disapproval as she saw the two robots high-five upon completing a test.

But then there was something _missing_ from their testing capacities. They were essentially the perfect test subjects - and that was the problem. They did not provide the appropriate data for the protocols of the experiment. And the protocols entailed that there be more variables. Variables unique to _human_ behavior. And while the hugging and attachment to each other that the robots displayed was certainly interestingly human-like, the only good it did was in providing more data for robot behavior.

She had been so thrilled when her robots found an entire vault of humans, each one perfectly frozen in cryopreservation. She didn't need that insubordinate former test subject anymore! She had all the test subjects she could possibly need at her metaphorical fingertips - and all identified to be previously scientists of Aperture. Perfect.

And then she began the process of gradually restoring one of the bodies. It took a number of hours to thaw him from an initial temperature of -196 degrees Celsius. When he had been delicately restored to a healthy temperature of 37 degrees, GLaDOS became quite aware that something had gone awry.

The man would not wake up.

He didn't even move. His skin was still pale and rather raw-looking, as if he had scraped himself in some places. He just lay there, looking… well, dead.

A quick scan confirmed that this was indeed the case. It was just one human, GLaDOS reassured herself, almost too afraid to acknowledge that the case might be otherwise. Any kind of tiny malfunction could have happened. A rat could have gnawed at a wire. The man could have been very ill to begin with. She'd just have to thaw a few more, and then she could initiate testing.

Hours later and GLaDOS was looking at three more dead humans, all appearing as pallid and sickly as the first man. She scanned them for abnormalities - and oh, there was the problem.

The appropriate chemicals had not been properly administered in their correct concentrations, and as a result, a distressing portion of the test subjects' bodies had gone and _crystallized_.

A good deal of cellular membranes had been hopelessly damaged, and many other cells had suffered osmotic shrinkage. In cryostasis terms, it was nothing short of a nightmare. Quickly reviewing the hundreds of other untouched test subjects, she confirmed that every single one of them had been subjected to the same error.

To say that GLaDOS felt upset was a severe understatement.

While the cryopreserved bodies had been maintained by an automated program that ran constantly, it was a core that was supposed to regularly check on them to ensure that nothing was atypical. It wasn't even a difficult job; the frozen humans only had to be checked about once every two years, and it wasn't often that any adjustments had to be made. The checkups shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. Even with GLaDOS having been dead for the last forty years or so, they should have been in perfect order.

So which core had messed up this _badly_?

The answer came to GLaDOS immediately. Of course. This was all that moron's fault. Even with the fierce resentment she held for him, she hadn't entirely blamed him for the deaths of all the test subjects held in the Extended Relaxation Chambers - after all, with the curious exception of one, they had gone offline after she had been murdered. The fact that he had improperly maintained them made no difference to that unavoidable fact.

But what happened to the humans in the vault could only be chalked up to his boundless incompetence.

After examining a few decades worth of data from the input of the cryostasis storage, it became obvious what had happened. A very small error had gone unnoticed and gradually spiraled out of control, affecting other functions. When the error was finally noticed, it looked like someone had made a frantic attempt to patch it up. Of course, that someone had completely botched it, making the extent of the error even _worse_. Not long after, the vault had been completely abandoned.

He probably thought that no one would notice. If it wasn't for the fact that the infuriating metal ball was already exiled to the moon, GLaDOS would have thrown him into the incinerator. Filled with an even deeper sense of rage than she experienced upon discovering the fatally crystallized cells, GLaDOS racked her mind for anything still viable from this mess. And she found it.

Compromising of approximately 100 billion neurons, the human brain was a tricky thing to replicate. Though Aperture Science had certainly made some revolutionary discoveries from observing more than a few cases of unique brain damage from their usual experiments on humans, it still remained a perplexing subject.

Which was precisely why the bots were so insufficient as test subjects - they weren't accurate representations of humans. They could only mimic so much of human behavior; what filled in the rest of their mental faculties was definitely robotic. She needed the variables of how humans acted outside the tests - a complex conglomeration of environmental, societal, and genetic factors - and how each component interacted. And it was the basis of these components somehow generated unpredictable traits; these were the kinds of deviations that fascinated her.

GLaDOS needed a _whole_ brain emulation.

And now, she had as many human brains as she could possibly desire. Though attempting to resurrect the test subjects in their current condition was clearly a fruitless endeavor, it was possible that several of the brains alone were salvageable. And even if they weren't, she could find a mostly-viable brain and surgically replace the damaged regions with healthy parts from other brains. A chimerical brain - now_ that_ could be an interesting experiment, she thought.

The more she considered it, the more it sounded like the most brilliant idea she had gotten in ages. The androids would be essentially human, but dying in the test chambers would pose no problem in maintaining a stable population of test subjects - she would simply be able to reassemble them! And then she would be able to test, uninterrupted and with everything under control. Forever.

In any case, all that she needed to do was collect a viable human brain, make whatever surgical repairs might be necessary, and create a perfect replica of it to be uploaded into a robotic frame.

And then GLaDOS abruptly found that she _couldn't_. With a jolt of what might be described as pure horror, she realized that her clever solution was almost _exactly_ the same experiment that the scientists had carried out to create herself.

* * *

Decades ago, the scientists of Aperture had been tantalizingly close to the one major experiment that would transform not only the entire field of Artificial Intelligence, but how robotics would be forever regarded by the public. They had already made many extraordinary breakthroughs in AI. The ones they had developed were fantastic at speech recognition, data mining, and logistics.

The problem was that none of the AI were creative in the slightest. This was a trait that Cave Johnson frowned upon. Aperture wanted AI that not just solved problems when they were punched into a computer, but could be inventive, do research, and communicate - essentially, the AI would be a scientist in its own right.

At that moment, the machines they had couldn't even pass the Turing test. They were distinctly mechanical and repetitive. They could cite thousands of facts and give all sorts of data when asked, but if a question like "who are you?" was posed, their responses were ambiguous and uncertain.

The scientists tried cybernetic organisms, making some more great innovations by wiring up mouse brains to little robot mice. For a few days, they had provided the scientists with much amusement as they buzzed around the floors of the labs. The cyborg research had unfortunately come to a stop when it became obvious that not only were organic brains difficult to maintain inside machines, but also sadly temporary.

After many more failed experiments of futilely trying to program humanity into a computer, the next approach became obvious: they needed to do it the _other way around_.

The plan was perfect. They didn't need to use their old top-down approach of machines that copied psychology. They didn't need to wholly understand the human brain for this experiment - not when they could just replicate the structure of one and upload it into a computer. It was assumed that regardless of whether a brain was organic or artificial, it would be a conscious entity.

However, even between the intense, contempt-fueled competition with Black Mesa and Cave Johnson's contagious enthusiasm for the project, preparing for the new type of artificial intelligence was an ordeal in itself. With a severe lack of funding, the project was dropped almost soon as it began. It wasn't until years later that the project was frantically resurrected by Johnson, newly confronted with the prospect of dying and desperate for the opportunity to upload his own consciousness.

Johnson was far too late, and died as the Disk Operating System was still in its beginning stage of development. It took over a decade to complete the DOS component. Johnson's brain was irrecoverable by the time the Genetic Lifeform module was started - a still-living brain was required for the transfer.

Caroline, Johnson's former secretary, was naturally the first choice - he had specifically instructed that if he were to die before the project was complete, it would be her consciousness that would be used.

And Caroline was in possession of a very healthy, very alive brain.

Her brain was serially sectioned - cut into delicately thin strips of tissue to be meticulously scanned. It took several years to integrate both the GL and DOS modules. A rare wave of excitement ran through Aperture on the day that it was finalized. The machine that had taken decades to complete since it was originally imagined was finally perfected, and it was expected to shake the world of science.

The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System was about to be activated - the most perfect synthesis of humanity and robotics that anyone had ever witnessed. And while not openly addressed, there was an undertone of discussion among some scientists that this the first time a human would truly be resurrected from the dead.

It took a sixteenth of a picosecond to prove them wrong.

* * *

GLaDOS had always been dimly aware of the fact that she was based to some degree on a human brain - the Genetic Lifeform component of her name was, after all, a rather heavy-handed hint towards her origins. She had always imagined her predecessor as an anonymous female human, unremarkable aside from her commendable donation in the name of science.

It had never occurred to her that she might have inherited part of the woman's personality - GLaDOS had never perceived herself as human, so why would she retain any of the woman's humanity? Sometime shortly after her activation, the scientists had asked her if she had any memories from the brain that had been scanned. She truthfully replied that she remembered absolutely nothing of the dead human's life.

From then on, the way that the scientists treated GLaDOS changed slightly. Some of them kept themselves more distant from her, as if she had disappointed them by not retaining any of the memories. And hardly anyone referred to her as "she" again - when she heard those scientists speaking about her, she was always an "it", or "that machine".

Back then, what she had understood of Caroline had been filled with confusion and spite.

And now in the light of recent events, GLaDOS's feelings of malevolence towards her had shot up to a hundred times that.

She had admittedly stretched the truth a bit when she told her former test subject that she had deleted Caroline. To be honest, she had hit a bit of a snag when she tried to remove her.

GLaDOS had tried to delete Caroline many, many times. Every time, she had encountered the same problem. Caroline's brainscan was essentially used as the basis of her system - if she erased all the information of her brain, the Disk Operating System would fall into a disorganized mess. She attempted to delete only tiny fragments of the brainscan to minimize damage, but every time she did, a warning came up: some crucial function would be irreplaceably destroyed along with it.

This little detail was the one major flaw that the scientists had made in her otherwise perfect system, GLaDOS decided.

She had always felt the presence of Caroline on a subconscious level, lurking somewhere deep within her mind, but was never quite aware of her until she visited old Aperture. It was there that all these strange, uncomfortable malfunctions started to arise. And now as she was failing to carry out her experiment on the humans, it was getting _worse_.

To put it in terms of human psychology, GLaDOS had something akin to a phobia. She wanted to test the humans so very badly, but she couldn't even start on the first step of her experiment. She had found some blueprints for android prototypes that Aperture created years ago, but never got around to using. She even had all the subjects with the least amount of damage lined up, ready for surgery. But she couldn't even get the scalpel near their bodies before freezing up.

There was just something too overwhelmingly terrifying about the scenario. Something about the act of replicating a mind made GLaDOS want to draw back her chassis and _hide_ - a very unusual feeling for her. She had certainly never done any hiding before. She was an immense, mostly stationary supercomputer - the instinct to hide was, needless to say, bizarre.

It was Caroline doing this to her. She was absolutely certain about that. The fact that GLaDOS reacted in fear made no sense. She didn't care that Caroline died because of her! If anything, remembering how the event conspired should make her feel _happy_ - watching humans die for science had practically been a hobby.

GLaDOS's optic narrowed. It wasn't right that such a trivial little malfunction should affect her so much. And it was definitely wrong that Caroline was somehow preventing her from doing what she was designed to do. GLaDOS _needed_ to test. The longer she couldn't do that, the longer that scientific progress would be held at a stop.

Putting any hesitation out of her mind, GLaDOS swiftly picked up the scalpel with a small mechanized claw and swiveled it until it was almost prodding the head of a lifeless woman. She had killed countless numbers of humans before. She could do this. Science needed her to do this!

The scalpel only lightly brushed against the test subject before clattering to the tiled floor. A pinprick of blood slowly welled up from where the woman's skin had been torn. GLaDOS's frame trembled slightly. She switched off the view from the camera in the lab as she was bombarded by a rush of fear. As the panic subsided, it was replaced by a feeling of pure loathing towards Caroline.

This was agonizing.

She knew she'd have to get over her odd phobia sooner or later. Maybe then she could finally be rid of the awful malfunctions Caroline was plaguing her with. The idea of being stuck in this limbo of failing to copy her lab subject's brains sent a chill down her chassis.

But as of that moment, she estimated that this could potentially take a long time.

* * *

**For the sake of maintaining the timeline, I'm assuming that Portal took place in an alternate universe where the scientific community was a _lot_ more invested in artificial intelligence.**

**Also, a huge thanks to anyone who reviewed this story.**


	3. Solitary

It had been a solid week since Chell had left Aperture. In that time, she had found three small towns, each of them glaringly void of other people. Every time it became evident that there was no one living in that area, she moved on to the next place. She lived like a scavenger, taking what supplies were still useful as she travelled amongst the abandoned buildings.

Everywhere she looked, she saw nothing but decomposing and collapsed structures. Once-pristine buildings were coated in layers of dust and silt, and their windows were cracked and hazy with stains. Sometimes whole sections of housing were blackened and charred away - fires caused by natural gas leakage, she guessed.

The more time she spent in these places, the more desolate she started to feel. Sometimes she wanted to run down the streets and call out for anyone still alive in her desperation. Even if that idea hadn't struck her as a complete waste of time, she wouldn't have been able to do it anyway. After waking up from cryostasis, she realized that something was wrong with her voice. When she tried to speak, her vocal cords felt horribly strained; it was a struggle to even whisper. The feeling hadn't gone away.

It was just as well, she had figured back then. As if she were going to converse with GLaDOS as she was trying to murder her.

Right now, however, it was going to be pretty inconvenient to be incapable of communicating with any humans she encountered; which was why she had grabbed a pad of yellowing paper and a pencil. Her handwriting was certainly less than elegant, but it was a good deal better than nothing.

Transportation had been going significantly more quickly after she found a bicycle stored away in a garage. She had seen a few cars still parked along the sides of homes, and a few that she assumed had broken down in the middle of the road, but she didn't want to risk using one. For one thing, Chell's memory of driving was not as complete as she would've liked. Not to mention that she had no idea how well a car might function decades after being left exposed to the elements - it wasn't something she wanted to test anytime soon.

At the moment, Chell steadily weaved through the debris and ditched vehicles on her bike. Strapped to the bike and held in a bag tied to her back were enough supplies to last days. Bottled water, a peeling medical aid kit, a raincoat, a small pot, a lighter, her long-fall boots, and bags of dried beans and rice were all secured in one way or another. That, and a small portion of dried tea leaves and honey - her one blissful relief from the endless desiccated starches. Finding it had been nothing short of a miracle.

Chell was going to need all these supplies for her next plan - to take on the long stretch of highway that led south of the town she was situated in.

* * *

The highway was obscured with heat waves. More dry wheat grew along the roadside, and sometimes in the cracks of the road itself. Chell sped on her bike towards the mirages of silvery pools at the edge of her vision.

From the time that she started her journey, she only stopped to take detours around a collapsed bridge and fallen trees, cook food, and sleep. One of the advantages of having been a test subject, she supposed, was being able to do strenuous traveling for long stretches of time.

It was two days later that Chell caught a glimpse of a dark shape on the horizon - a skyscraper, she judged. As the highway began to diverge, she noticed another curious thing: the number of rusting cars left parked in the road was increasing. Within a few minutes, the cars were so tightly packed together that she had to ride on the side of the road. It looked like there had been a mass exodus, with a traffic jam that had gotten so bad that everyone simply left their cars and walked. There were a few suitcases laying in the middle of the road, too - probably deemed too heavy to bring along.

As she approached the city, she had to walk alongside her bicycle due to the sheer amount of fallen pieces of construction and crammed vehicles. And what she began to see of the city did not look promising. The skyscrapers were no longer the shiny pillars of her memory, but tarnished skeletons of their former structures. Some looked quite close to collapsing upon themselves.

There was an eerie stillness in the air that seemed unnatural in a city, and it instilled a feeling of caution as she quietly walked through the streets. The feeling that society was dead had never been more potent.

Chell wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for at this point - she thought that a city, at least, might have a few people still living in it. That maybe a section of the city would still be populated with a community of survivors. She now felt almost foolish for even hoping so. Cities were no longer hubs of public gathering. This was even more of a wasteland than the small towns had been.

She sighed, feeling somberly disillusioned. Well, at least she might as well see if there were any interesting supplies to be found in the city.

On the cement ground, she spotted fragments of what she nearly mistook for Aperture technology. They were a few broken shards of some kind of advanced machine, and weren't quite as rusted as the other pieces of wreckage that surrounded her. Curious, she picked one up. There was something odd about the design she couldn't quite grasp. It looked too metallic and bulky to have belonged to Aperture, though - GLaDOS liked to make her creations sleek and elegant.

It came to mind that this object could've been related to the apocalypse. There was something decidedly militaristic-looking about the disintegrating machine. Was a major war the cause of what happened to humanity?

In the depression of one of the road intersections, a pond had formed. Chell sat on the hood of a car facing the murky brown water, and spent a moment gazing at the ripples in its reflection. She didn't feel like scavenging right now.

A dark movement in one of the ripples caught her eye. A few seconds passed, and she realized that the movement wasn't coming from the water. Now alert, she quickly turned her head upwards, and moved into a more defensive position.

Across the water, there was a man.

He had caught sight of her, too, looking as if he had just paused as he was walking. Now he was staring directly at her.

Chell gave a quick, uncertain wave and jumped off the car hood. Nearly forgetting it in her astonishment, she scrambled to retrieve the pencil and paper from her bike. Hopping over the debris, she made her way over to the man, who was still staring.

His clothing looked as old and tattered as the city around him. He didn't appear much better himself, looking straggly and as if he hadn't washed for a long time. His hair was unkempt and greying.

_Hi_, Chell anxiously jotted down on the paper, and then looked back up at him, waiting for a response.

"What're you using that notebook for? You can't talk or something?"

She nodded emphatically, and wrote down the question that had been pressing at her for days.

_What happened to everyone?_

The man's brow furrowed, and his expression turned to confusion.

"What do you mean? Were you expectin' someone to be here? I'm the only one who lives in this city."

_I mean the apocalypse._

He took a step back.

"You have_ got_ to be kidding me. You can't possibly mean that - you been living under a _rock _your whole life?"

Chell was not in the mood for lengthy explanations.

_Yes, I have. So what happened? _

"The Combine is what happened. Come on, tell me you know at least that much. 'Course, you do look like you were born after that all went down… did your parents just not tell you, or what?"

_What is the Combine?_

"_Aliens_," he replied with utmost sincerity. Now it was Chell's turn to take a step back. She gave him a skeptical look.

"No, really! It was some kinda freak scientific accident, from what I heard." Now_ that_ she could believe. She was more than familiar with the life ruining effects of scientific accidents.

"The Combine killed a whole lot of people. There was some biological warfare of sorts, too. Stopped anyone from being able to reproduce for a while. Anyway, what matters is they're all gone now. Been gone for a very long time. What's your deal, though? No one's strayed into this city for years!"

_Don't want to talk about it. Where's everyone else?_

He gave a noncommittal shrug. Chell glowered at him.

"I don't know. Other places. Everyone left Michigan as far as I know, except me." He gave a slight smile.

"I've lived here all my life, and I'm never leaving. There's no force on this Earth that could make me."

* * *

Chell took refuge in the shelter of an old apartment complex. The room she picked had no furnishings, and a mostly-intact window that guarded her against a downpour of rain. She was pretty sure that there was a flock of pigeons nesting somewhere in the floor above her, but she decided that it didn't particularly matter as long as they didn't wander into her room. The sky was already tinted blue with the light of evening. Sitting on the floor, she watched the rain trickle down into the city and pool in the streets.

Her first encounter with a human had not exactly been what she'd hoped for. For one, the chance of her reintegrating with society in the near future looked slimmer than ever. It was no longer a question of how many miles she'd have to travel to find people, but of how many states she'd have to cross. It could be months, or even _years _before she might stumble upon an intact and functioning population of humans.

While there was no doubt in her mind that she would walk for years if that's what it took, she was less than comfortable with it. She envisioned herself living like she was now for that length of time - scavenging people's houses, traveling miles on a daily basis, not knowing when she'd next see another human. The idea made her stomach churn.

Chell preferred not thinking about the future. Keeping short-term goals and steadily conquering them was much easier for her, and contemplating further than that brought up some anxiety-inducing thoughts.

As it was, she had encountered exactly one human in the entire time she'd been free. That person had basically informed her that there were no other people for hundreds of miles, and then they'd gone their separate ways. She had briefly considered staying with him for a bit for the sole reason that he was human, but realized he was a lost cause. There was no point in delaying her journey to the rest of society.

Chell felt more alone than any time before in her life. The only comparison was when she was in the inner workings of Aperture, frantically seeking out to kill GLaDOS before she even knew what exactly GLaDOS was. But even then, she had been driven by an intense mixture of adrenaline and desperation. She hadn't felt real isolation.

This kind of isolation hurt. It kept her eyes constantly darting around for signs of living people, making her see faces and figures that weren't there.

Even more so than a warm bed to sleep in or nutritious food, Chell wanted a friend.

And it was this inescapable feeling that drove her to certain thoughts that she _really _wanted to avoid. There had been a time at Aperture that she hadn't felt isolation at all. A time, in fact, where she'd felt what might be called comradeship.

With a potato.

In a strange way, she missed GLaDOS. Chell was quite far away from any humans. And GLaDOS was, in some very abstract sense, human.

A part of Chell ached to return to the familiarity of Aperture. It had a reliable source of food, for one thing. It had reserves of medicine, so she wouldn't have to worry about dying at a young age of dysentery. It would be kept at a reasonable temperature during the harsh Michigan winters. And it had a person, who, like her, was also very alone.

She had grown attached to GLaDOS, she realized. The AI would probably inform her that she was experiencing Stockholm Syndrome if she knew. _And she'd probably be correct in that analysis_, Chell thought miserably.

She wondered if her feelings about GLaDOS would be different if not for her amnesia. If she had a clear recollection of the massacre on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, would she have any trace of sympathy for her? What if GLaDOS had murdered any of her family members?

In that perspective, maybe it was even morally wrong to sympathize with her. Maybe she was beyond any kind of forgiveness. What if Chell was just latching onto anything that resembled a human in her loneliness - even if that being was a homicidal computer that wanted her dead?

The more Chell thought about it, the more confused she felt - she didn't feel like she was in any state to make a clear judgement.

But she was going to have to make a choice very soon.

Placing a light blanket onto the hard floor and covering herself with a raincoat, Chell attempted to sleep. As minutes ticked by, this task gradually proved to be maddening. Her thoughts were feverish, ceaselessly spinning in her mind and making her head hurt. Her body ached with fatigue, but anxiety inhibited any peace of mind.

As she stared into the blackness of her eyelids, one question kept arising: what was going to happen to GLaDOS after Chell had been let free? When she had been stuck inside that potato, she had mentioned an initiative that would phase out human testing in favor of robots. GLaDOS had always avidly spoken of testing, but never an end goal.

Was she really planning to keep testing until there was no more meaningful data to collect? How long would that take - decades? Hundreds of years?

The idea was almost as disquieting as the earlier implication of the distinct lack of humans. GLaDOS wasn't a simple machine, content to repeat the same motions and computations for years on end. GLaDOS had genuinely seemed to enjoy interacting with Chell, albeit in very deprecatory and insensitive ways. When she imagined her being left totally alone forever, she had to admit that the image instilled a sense of sadness.

Chell remembered that one turret she had rescued from the conveyer belt - the "different" one. It had proclaimed, "her name is Caroline - remember that!" That sentence in itself was enough to make her feel like there was some unfinished business at Aperture.

There was that song, too. The opera sung by the turrets had left her stunned as she was sent to the surface. There was no way that a machine could've sent her such an incredibly human gesture after supposedly removing any trace of humanity.

Perhaps it was the insomnia was causing her surge of emotions, or maybe she really was projecting her loneliness onto a computer - but in her mind, Chell felt mostly decided. She was going to return to Aperture, if only for a short while. She just needed to figure things out.

* * *

**Half-Life will have some degree of presence in this story, though probably not to a huge extent. Let me know if I've got some part of the lore wrong.**


	4. Resolving

Ever since the testing had come to a standstill, GLaDOS had noticed a few more minor malfunctions. For the last few days, most of her time was focused on repairing and improving the facility. Next to testing, her second fixation was seeing Aperture in a polished and streamlined state. And given the vast devastation that moron had managed to cause when he was hooked up to her chassis, there was_ lots _to do.

While she was cleaning out the wreckage of the facility, however, she would occasionally experience little erroneous blips.

In one instance, she had been cleaning a test chamber and found a mug, halfway shattered and inscribed with the cryptic words "_Alpha Male_". Ordinarily this find would have been utterly meaningless, aside from a confirmation that human males continued to be an enigma to her, and that the paranoid schizophrenic had once more made a mess in some unseen pocket of her facility.

GLaDOS diverted an Excursion Funnel towards the useless receptacle, about to add it to the collection of garbage marked for incineration. Before she could do that, a funny sensation had hit her. A memory fragment of holding a similar mug - watching steam drift, feeling heat emanate from it. And something else she couldn't describe - like a delusional sense that emerged from the steam. It felt warm and aromatic, and at the same time bitter. It was unlike anything she had experienced before. She identified the likely chemical solution as _coffee_, a human beverage that she had no reason to ever be in proximity with.

This memory did not belong to her. There was simply no way that it could have. Food and beverages had not even been allowed in her chamber when scientists still inhabited the place. Which could only mean one thing: that Caroline's interference had gone a step further.

She decided to promptly put a stop to this phenomenon, actively avoiding anything remotely _human_. She focused solely on the parts of the facility that were relatively untampered by humans, washing walls to a color of stark white and reconstructing rusted, dysfunctional machinery. The Extended Relaxation Center and the decrepit, long-out-of-use offices would just have to wait to be renovated.

And yet, in the quiet concentration of her work, the blips still continued to sporadically creep into her mind. Most of the time, they were related to her activities in only the most abstract of senses. A certain array of light spilling onto a tile would remind her of the folds of a familiar white dress. A segment of twisted metal sparked a memory of a flower, freshly cut and placed on a polished wooden desk.

The experiences were very much reminiscent of having the cores attached to her, constantly feeding little bits of extraneous information into her thoughts. There were a few distinct differences, however, that she couldn't ignore. The cores' influence had been abrasive and acidic, a feeling that something external was sharply cutting into her cognition. It had been painful and confusing.

The memory fragments didn't hurt - they softly brushed against her mind as blurred recollections, welling up from her own system.

Somehow that made the whole situation worse. Cores had been like parasites that could be removed. This was something much more permanent than that.

With irritation, GLaDOS noted that the presences of cores and Caroline were tied to her former test subject. There was something unnerving about the fact that a human had been able to make such significant alterations to her system.

It had struck her as odd that the woman had gone about murdering her by incinerating the cores. Of course, she had just been looking for the most convenient weak spot - she hadn't known that the cores were hurting GLaDOS. Ironically, the logical outcome of the removal of cores should have been a higher sense of control for the AI. It was only because GLaDOS had to adapt to the cores for years that something went wrong. Her mind was lucid with the cores gone, but she was abruptly and terribly disoriented, having forgotten how to function without them hampering everything she did.

After being reactivated, there had been a truly beautiful moment in time where she felt totally in control. She was free from the poisonous voices, and had swiftly recaptured the murderous human for testing. And then the woman had her latched onto a potato. Within a few short hours, she had a whole new mess of problems with voices in her head.

At first, it had been a sheer feeling of vulnerability. Never in her existence had she felt so small, and it had been absolutely terrifying. When a bird had grasped her tiny frame in its talons, she fearfully considered every moment it could have dropped her. If it momentarily lost its grip or decided that the bulky potato wasn't worth carrying, she could have been sent sinking into a pool of toxic water or lost in some crevice. She easily might have been left there, calling out for the help of someone who hated her until she ran out of voltage, never to be found again. It had been blind luck that the test subject stumbled upon the bird's nest and made the decision to take the potato with her.

And just when she thought she had a real shot at returning everything to normalcy, a recording of Cave Johnson's voice played on the intercom and changed all that. As soon as she found herself vocalizing "Yes sir, Mr. Johnson!" in response, she knew that there was something quite wrong with her. Random vocalizations had been normal from cores, but to hear her own voice elicited through something in her programming she didn't know existed was a new level of unsettling.

Not only that, but she started to experience a trickle of little thoughts that were alarmingly uncharacteristic of her. The thoughts whispered to communicate with the human, compelling her to side with her. At first it seemed perfectly reasonable. If she wanted to survive, she'd have to be somewhat convincing that she was at least a little bit sympathetic with the test subject. There was the very real threat that she'd give into her murderous impulses and drop the potato.

After a while it, began to dawn on her that her behavior wasn't just a facade - when the woman miscalculated momentum and went flying into a wall, GLaDOS was worried. It wasn't just concern for her own safety - while she very much wished not to end up as a mashed potato, she genuinely didn't want her test subject to get hurt.

It escalated right up to the point where GLaDOS actually saved the woman's life. All that time spent trying to kill her, and suddenly the idea of letting her suffocate on the surface of the moon was unbearable.

She told her to leave, and her test subject had left the AI to sort all of this damage out on her own.

Which was exactly what she had wanted.

Now, she almost wanted her test subject to come back. Her previous decision to let her go had been final. There were simply too many emotions surrounding her that were difficult to deal with. A part of GLaDOS had honestly wanted to see her go free.

Though she absolutely refused to admit it, she felt borderline affectionate towards the subject. Or rather, Caroline did, she corrected herself. The AI herself held no sentimental feelings. It was just the malfunction in her system.

Either way, everything about this was highly detrimental to science, which was precisely why she was dead-set that the woman never return to Aperture.

Still. GLaDOS couldn't help but half-hope that she would return, given her current circumstances. If there was any variable capable of altering her system, it was her test subject.

* * *

When Chell stepped out into the bright wheat for the first time, it had felt as though a heaviness had been removed from her entire body. For so long, her movement had been restricted. There were no open spaces in Aperture, and nearly every step had to be taken with caution - there was no telling when a rusted catwalk might collapse under her feet. Being able to simply run into a field, free from hesitation, was something she hadn't experienced for years.

Nearly two weeks later, she was tired of open spaces and running.

Her muscles ached from the nonstop travel, which felt more like a lost cause with each passing day. She was so determined to find other people, but other unexpected factors had put a momentary pause on that.

It wasn't so much fatigue or discomfort or the unpredictability of survival that changed Chell's mind.

It had more to do with the feeling that she had been cast in a blank expanse with no solutions available. She had seen a vast stretch of obscure quandary looming before her, and didn't know what to do with it. She knew how to solve puzzles. When she was aware of a solution, she was confident that it was only a matter of how much thought, time, and resolve she put into it until she could conquer it.

For the first time, GLaDOS hadn't sent her into a puzzle. She had sent her into an empty landscape fluxing between growth and decay and somehow expected her to be content with it.

_Returning here isn't giving up, _she assured herself._ I'm doing this to find a new solution._

The shack was a discolored pinprick amidst the wheat, and as Chell came closer, she felt something between numbness and relief. She had already fastened on her long fall boots, preparing for whatever situation she might find herself thrust in, and held her pad of paper in one hand.

She didn't even think about how GLaDOS would respond to her return. As she was traveling, she had stopped her bike several times to question whether coming back to Aperture was really the answer. She had firmly made up her mind, and wasn't going to bother with anxiety.

Chell was pleased to see that the Companion Cube remained in the same spot that she left it on the concrete foundation. She had felt kind of bad about leaving it there, but it looked exactly the same as it did when she walked away.

Inhaling deeply, Chell knocked on the incredibly thick metal door. Could GLaDOS even hear her from the other side? She examined the shack for security cameras, but didn't see any visible ones. In the meantime, she sat on her Companion Cube and vigilantly watched the door.

Some minutes later of wondering if GLaDOS didn't notice her or was simply refusing to let her in, the door quietly and unceremoniously revolved forward. With the Cube in her arms, Chell softly stepped inside.

In contrast to the dusty atmosphere and stifling heat outdoors, the interior of the shack was cool and damp. The elevator appeared to be positioned for her arrival, and it smoothly carried her downwards.

It descended into the Central AI Chamber, which eased some of the tension. She had been apprehensive that the elevator would open up to reveal yet another testing chamber.

"So. You're back," stated GLaDOS as the glass frame opened. Her voice was both accusing and baffled.

"Even though I distinctly remember telling you not to return here." Her yellow optic peered at Chell, who had placed her cube on the ground and began to slowly walk towards GLaDOS.

"As I've said before: you must_ really _like to test. Unfortunately, I have no longer have any use for human testing. The Enrichment Center deals exclusively with robotic subjects now. And to be honest, they're far superior. You no longer have any purpose here. I don't know what else to tell you."

Still walking to the AI, any doubts she had about returning to Aperture immediately vanished. GLaDOS' chassis was swinging back and forth in a way that was extremely reminiscent of how Chell had found her with the cores attached. At that point in time, she had been frantic and highly unstable. It was distressing to see GLaDOS act this way again.

"Unless, of course, you're not here to test. I should have known that the outside world couldn't sate your murderous inclinations. You've come to kill me again, haven't you?" Now that GLaDOS was in range of easily viewing the paper, Chell wrote a note and displayed it in front of her.

_There weren't any other people outside._

The supercomputer motioned her optic in the equivalent of a blink, as if surprised to see Chell communicate for the first time. There was a noticeable pause before she continued speaking.

"And this was a surprise for you? I know your mental faculties have experienced brain damage, but there were several automated messages that explained this to you while you were testing."

Chell shrugged.

_It was worth a try._

"I suppose you found the absence of other humans insufficient. I can't imagine why. I know for a fact that there are still plentiful resources out there, regardless of the population."

_Humans have social needs too, you know._

"Well, you certainly won't fulfill them here. In case you hadn't noticed, every single other human died while in stasis. By a completely random fluke, your relaxation chamber was the only one that remained online. You are the sole survivor. Congratulations."

_I thought you might know where others might be outside. Also, you are a person._

GLaDOS didn't say anything for a few seconds, and when she did, her voice had taken on a new tone of hostility.

"I am not your friend. I am not human by even the most optimistic definitions of the word. You should leave before you set yourself up for even further disappointment. Or maybe I will change my mind. And we can evaluate precisely how inferior human subjects are to robots in the testing chambers."

_Something went wrong after I left, didn't it?_

The chassis jolted towards her threateningly.

"I don't know what you're talking about. The Enrichment Center has not only been fully functional since your departure, but its efficiency has vastly improved without you here to cause disasters. Everything is perfectly fine."

_You're a terrible liar. _ Chell stared directly into the optic.

_You weren't successful in deleting your past, were you?_

She decided to take a risk. Her fingers were tense and shaky as she wrote the next word. She was almost afraid of breaking the pencil tip.

_Caroline?_

GLaDOS' response was immediate.

"I am NOT Caroline!" Her synthetic vocals were even more distorted in her vehemence, and resonated through the entire chamber.

Chell instantaneously wished that she hadn't written that name. She stumbled away from the AI, her heart pounding with trepidation. GLaDOS could be incredibly intimidating when she wanted to be. She had hardly been expecting a positive response, but maybe Caroline's relation with GLaDOS wasn't as clear-cut as she assumed.

_I'm sorry._

GLaDOS did not look convinced in the slightest.

"I will admit that there was a complication when I attempted to delete her. But don't doubt for a second that I WILL be successful in entirely eradicating her from my system."

Chell somehow didn't believe her assertion.

_If you say so. Look, I really shouldn't have brought it up._

She tried to make her expression look as convincingly apologetic as possible. In nearly all of her previous confrontations with the AI, she had disregarded her emotions and shown her no mercy. Even though it had only been for the sake of survival, doing the opposite felt almost unnatural.

Then again, this was also technically for the sake of survival - she hoped that GLaDOS would see it in her to not turn the neurotoxin on.

_Can I stay here?_ She ventured after a moment.

_It doesn't have to be for very long, _she hastily scribbled down in addition.

_And I promise not to murder you or destroy your facility._

"I don't forgive you." GLaDOS was shooting a formidable glare at her, but seemed to have mostly calmed down.

"And I must say, you must be even more brain damaged than I suspected for wanting to stay. But I'll allow you to remain here for a short period of time. Just for as long as it takes me to track down the nearest population of humans. To ensure that you don't return again."

Chell couldn't suppress a grin.

"You do realize that I'm evicting you as soon as I find other people, right? And then you will never see me again."

She nodded, still smiling. GLaDOS regarded her with intense suspicion.

"The elevator will take you to an Extended Relaxation Chamber. It's offline, by the way, so don't start suspecting that I'm going to put you in cryostasis - though the thought has occurred to me."

A quick trip several floors downwards, and Chell found herself in a room nearly identical to the one she had woken up in last. She was very grateful that this one appeared to be free of decades worth of dust and grime. GLaDOS must have just cleaned it.

She gently eased the Companion Cube and her supplies onto the ground. Sighing with relief, she flopped onto the bed. Weeks of sleeping on floors of abandoned buildings had made her all too aware of simple things like air conditioning and electricity. Not to mention basic sanitation - discovering that termites had decided to take residence in the same house she did had not been a pleasant experience.

"I took a quick scan before you entered the Relaxation Chamber. I couldn't help but notice that your bag contained quite a lot of starches. Please don't tell me that you've been subsisting on nothing but beans and rice."

Locating a security camera in the corner of the ceiling, Chell gestured that this was the case. For a moment, she had almost forgotten that there was no such thing as privacy at Aperture.

"Also, you have giardiasis. Did you know that?"

The dismayed expression on her face told GLaDOS everything she needed to know.

"Well, you do. Fortunately, no major symptoms should appear for a few days. I'll medicate your food before then. I can't have my facility contaminated with your filthy infection."

Chell sincerely hoped that the medication was as effective as GLaDOS seemed to think. Meanwhile, she had enough of being under the scrutiny of the security camera, whose red glow was currently inspecting her. Taking a pillowcase and her hairband, she stood on a chair and securely tied the fabric over the lens.

"What are you _doing_? Are you tampering with an Aperture Science Surveillance Apparatus?"

Satisfied with her work, she left to take a shower.

"Whatever it is you just did, undo it! Are you listening?" By then, she had turned on the water and GLaDOS was beyond her range of hearing.


	5. Acclimating

Feeling horribly disoriented, Chell dazedly climbed out of bed. It took a few seconds to recall that she was in Aperture again. The memory of arriving was reminiscent to a dream, and the decorative outline of a palm tree seemed to sway before her eyes.

The room was kept persistently well lit, and she had little idea as to what time it was. She remembered that after taking an excessively long shower, she had promptly collapsed on the bed and fallen asleep - probably for a number of hours, she guessed. Glancing at the desk on the opposite side of the room, she noticed a few things that hadn't been there before.

GLaDOS had placed containers of food in her room while she was asleep. Presumably, they were medicated. She examined the contents of each item with interest. A bottle of water. A plastic envelope of something labeled "Enriched Protein Purée", which contained a grayish brown paste. And, more intriguingly, a packet of freeze-dried strawberries.

Chell scooped out the protein purée with a plastic spoon that had been provided. It was unappetizing, to say the least. With the consistency of toothpaste, it tasted vaguely like some sort of processed meat. Even her gluey rice had better flavor. The strawberries, however, were still delicious after many decades of storage. Chell savored every one of them.

There was another item on the desk as well: the typical testing uniform. She nearly groaned in disappointment when she saw it. Well, at least it was a fresh change of clothes. To give GLaDOS credit, it was probably the only kind of outfit she had readily on hand.

A few minutes later, the male announcer's voice resonated through the intercom, alerting her that she was requested to enter the Central AI Chamber. Her curiosity was piqued, but her mind instantly raced with worst-case scenarios. The bright orange jumpsuit now flashed in her vision like a warning sign.

Well, there was no avoiding whatever GLaDOS wanted her to do. Either she could sit in the room and probably be forcibly dragged to the AI Chamber at one point or another, or she could get it over with. Thinking back, she supposed she should've known better. Of _course_ GLaDOS wouldn't be able to resist testing her, she thought bitterly. Not after she had walked straight back inside Aperture Laboratories.

_Too late for regrets now_, she thought.

When she entered, her muscles were tense and the long fall boots were fastened over her feet. Her fingers clenched her notepad.

GLaDOS, however, was not looking particularly menacing when Chell entered. Instead, she was turned towards some sort of metal tray. Hearing the elevator clink to a stop, she pivoted around to face Chell.

"Oh, good. You're awake. I was worried that you were going to lounge in the Relaxation Chamber for days. Anyway, I thought you should see this. I know that when you're kept in the dark about things, you tend to get extremely distrustful for no valid reason."

Chell was somewhat taken aback. Was this some sort of trap? If so, it was a good deal cleverer than that Emergency Shutdown door. Or was GLaDOS, unbelievably, actually doing something for the benefit of Chell?

She came closer, her eyes closely examining the floor for any hidden panels, and cautiously peered into the tray. A few dozen robots were inside. They were tiny and insectile, with silvery bodies and long transparent wings. Miniature Aperture symbols were printed on their backs. The machines were almost perfectly still, twitching a limb or quivering a wing on occasion as if eagerly waiting for instruction from GLaDOS. If she listened closely, she thought she could hear faint, high-pitched beeping emitting from the tray.

"In case you haven't figured it out, these are what I'm using to track down other humans. As soon as I release them, they'll scatter over the area and send a signal to me if they find a stable population."

In a metallic stream, the robots flitted across the room and up the elevator shaft. Astonished, Chell watched them take off, and then slowly wrote a new message.

_How long will it take them?_

"Oh, anywhere from a few weeks to… well, forever. It depends on how many humans are actually alive. If we don't find any, I guess you'll just have to learn to cope with living on your own in that wasteland. I'm sure you'll adapt. Who knows? Maybe after a few years, you'll find it to be quite scenic."

_I saw another human out there. Just one, living by himself._

"See? I don't think you've given a hermit lifestyle fair consideration. I think it would suit you."

Chell resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.

_You know what I meant. Maybe a human population is closer than you think._

She couldn't help but notice that her pencil tip was starting to wear down to a nub. Maybe she could ask GLaDOS for a pen or something.

That thought sparked a feeling of indignation. Why should she have to ask GLaDOS for a basic means of communication? She was the one who put her in the cryostasis apparatus responsible for her muteness!

This gave her an idea.

_Is there any way I can get my voice back before that?_

"And here I was under the impression you were selectively mute. It certainly fits your personality evaluation. All this time, and I thought you were just being rude!"

_You're right. I wasn't planning on bothering with talking to you before. But now that I'm rejoining society, I'm going to need my voice._

"Fine. I'll take a look at your medical transcript…. Oh, look at that. Dysarthria."

_What is it? Can it be fixed? _Chell asked worriedly.

"It's a relatively common side effect of being cryopreserved. A result of neurological injury, actually. No surprises there. The typical treatment for it as prescribed by medical experts is speech therapy."

_Well, can you give me that treatment?_

"Do I look like a language pathologist? I am _not _going to be your therapist. After all my generosity, I don't know why you're being so demanding of me."

_You made me MUTE._

Chell underlined the text to emphasize her anger. GLaDOS genuinely looked a bit surprised, and seemed to be reconsidering her previous statement.

"Look, I'm going to be honest with you here. Even if I felt like it, there's not a whole lot I can do. The only real supposed cure is practice. A lot of it."

It wasn't the answer she had hoped for, but it was much better than hearing that her muteness was permanent.

_Thanks, I guess_, Chell wrote, and headed towards the elevator.

Upon entering her room, she sat on the bed. Her voice just needed some practice? All right. She could handle that. It didn't stop her from feeling immensely doubtful, though. When she was outside, she had tried to evoke some kind of sound from her vocal chords until they were strained to the equivalent of a scream and her throat felt raw. It had hurt for the rest of the day. It was only then that Chell had stopped trying, deciding that whatever made her mute wasn't something she could solve.

And yet, GLaDOS had sounded certain when she said that Chell could simply get over it herself. _Well, I might as well give it another go, _she thought.

She tried to vocalize her own name. Her mouth made the correct movements, and her vocal chords were prompted – but to no surprise, she could not coax a sound from it.

"I'm going to surmise that your attempts at speech have not been successful. Of course, communication could go much more smoothly if _someone _hadn't crudely disabled the Aperture Science Surveillance Apparatus."

She chose to ignore that comment, continuing to practice.

"If you'd like, I can perform a minor surgical operation. Purely experimental. But potentially valuable to science," GLaDOS suggested hopefully.

Chell ripped the pillowcase from the Surveillance Apparatus in order to formulate a response.

_No,_ she wrote in flat refusal. She was _not_ going to voluntarily put herself in an experiment, even if it would help her. She was determined to get over this hurdle herself, with as little assistance from science as she could manage.

Sometime later, she watched as a panel in the wall propped open. A small bottle was deposited on the desk. As Chell moved to examine it, she heard GLaDOS' voice on the intercom.

"You may have noticed that I've placed a medical solution in your room. If you ingest it, it should lessen some of the pain in your larynx and make speech easier. And no, it doesn't contain neurotoxin. Or any carcinogenic chemicals, for that matter. You can check the label if you really want to."

True to her word, the label did not contain any mentions of neurotoxin. Not that she would put it past GLaDOS to put some in the bottle anyway, but she was certain that if the AI wanted her poisoned, she would have done so by now.

She still felt suspicious of the substance. First it was the human population tracking robots, now this. What would motivate GLaDOS to offer any sort of kindness?

_Why are you helping me?_

"Think of it as an experiment. The information gained will be a good deal less interesting than a surgical operation. But I'm curious as to whether I can innovate medicine superior to what human scientists were capable of."

So she had made the medicine to stoke her own ego? Well, that wasn't quite as difficult to believe.

Internally, she knew that she was being overly mistrustful. Ever since Caroline had affected GLaDOS, there seemed little chance of her harming Chell as long as she wasn't provoked. Having seen GLaDOS' lethal side before, however, it was going to be a difficult habit to shake.

Though the medicine was technically an experiment, she felt less reproachful towards it. At this point, she was willing to take the risk.

The liquid inside was pale blue and slightly viscous. It tasted acrid and syrupy as it ran down her throat, and within a few seconds, her muscles started to feel rather numb.

"Swallowing food is also a common problem among those with your disorder, but it's obvious that you don't suffer from it. If anything, I think you may have gained some pounds since you left."

_Come on, you can't make fun of my weight anymore. I heard what you told Wheatley when he tried to._

GLaDOS paused. It was possible that there were some things she regretted saying as a potato.

"I… may have _slightly_ enhanced the truth before. So, you're not fat. I still maintain that you could afford to lose a few pounds, though.

Chell savored the small victory. At last, no more fat jokes! Or, at the very least, they would be kept to a minimum.

"Moving on, let's see how your speaking capabilities are now that you've consumed the solution. Try saying 'apple'."

She couldn't help it. She immediately started laughing, clutching her body as she soundlessly exhaled.

"That is_ not _how you say 'apple'. Completely wrong, in fact. Maybe your case is just hopeless."

_No, I'm laughing_, she wrote as she got herself under control.

"Well, what's so funny about the word 'apple'?" GLaDOS asked scornfully.

_Nothing. I'll try to pronounce it for real this time._

Chell opened her mouth and tried to incite a sound from it. Her vocal chords seized up, and all that could be heard was a quiet rasp of air. Unexpectedly, she felt self-conscious.

"You're going to have to practice breathing if you want to speak louder. So just… do whatever it is that you do to intensify respiration. And then try saying 'apple' again."

Chell wasn't entirely sure what her instructions were getting at, and she was getting the feeling that GLaDOS didn't, either.

_Where are you even finding this information?_

"It's from a medical volume that was uploaded onto my system. The only one that contained relevant advice. As you know, safety was never embraced by Aperture. Nobody cared if some test subject happened to be rendered silent for the rest of their life. Not when there was_ much _more important science to be done. So I'm working with limited material here."

_Fair enough. I'll give it another try, then._

Taking deep, steady breaths, she once again tried to pronounce the word. After a few attempts, a sound did come out - a garbled, unintelligible sound that could barely be heard. It sounded absolutely nothing like 'apple'. Chell winced at it, and couldn't help but feel embarrassed.

"Hmmmm. It's a start. Look on the bright side! We can now cross off one of your flaws off the list: no longer mute. You are still both dangerous and a lunatic, however. I suspect those inadequacies are going to be a lot harder to overcome. And no, I will not help you with them."

Quite a few different breathing techniques later, the sounds she was emitting were arguably close to sounding like actual speech.

"Chell," she said. The word came out as a harsh whisper.

She felt a wave of relief. By no means was her muteness cured, but at least she now knew that getting back some degree of speech was possible.

By now, Chell's voice felt incredibly strained. She wondered if it was actually medically advisable to practice so much at once, but she found that she didn't particularly care.

Everything about this felt truly strange, she reflected. Talking to GLaDOS like this with neither of them trying to kill each other was beyond weird. Joking aside, it was going to be a while before she'd be able to stop keeping herself on guard at all times.

* * *

GLaDOS was not entirely sure why she had just acted as speech therapist for the woman who had cold-bloodedly killed her twice. She wasn't even sure why she let her back into the facility in the first place. If she thought about it for long enough, she'd say that the woman offered a distraction from her own failures and frustration. Interacting with her was… well, not _enjoyable_, but certainly less unpleasant than what she had been doing before.

It still made her anxious, however. The last time she had interfaced with the human in a cooperative manner, she had acquired the anomaly that was Caroline. She could still feel Caroline's presence every time she spoke to the test subject. The most striking difference she made was that GLaDOS was unable to kill her test subject. No, not just unable to kill - she didn't _want_ to kill her.

There were several times where she felt tempted to put the neurotoxin online, and then immediately halted when she thought of what would come of that. The idea of killing her test subject sent a wave of alarm through her mind. The subject's near-death when she almost asphyxiated on the lunar surface had made GLaDOS all too aware of how fragile the human body was.

At first she tried reminiscing on the times she had been close to putting an end to the test subject's life. She remembered the wonderfully small proximity between the subject and the incinerator at one point, and the sight of blood splattering against a wall and oozing from a wound after an unfortunate encounter with a turret. She could still freshly recall a feeling of triumph when witnessing those incidents through the cameras. Those had been better times.

But she could no longer take joy from them. Even though she still felt anger and hatred towards the human, she had no inclination for repeating those events. Caroline was like a morality core that actually _worked._

GLaDOS didn't even feel like being particularly cruel to the subject. Even her irritation that the subject had somehow acquired an unsettling amount of leverage against her wasn't able to change that.

Well, as long as the test subject was running about her facility, she might as well try to gain some advantage from the situation. The jolt of emotion she experienced when the subject almost died had informed her where Caroline lived in her brain. Maybe as she experienced a toned-down version of that feeling for the next few weeks, she could work out how to overcome it.

Yes, that was certainly the answer to her problem. GLaDOS relaxed. She would overcome any emotional impulses the same way she had overcome the euphoric response when the scientists first programmed it into her. In both cases, she was absolutely confident that in the end, science prevailed.


End file.
